Freedom

When you build your own world, you get to define all these very important words for your own fictional reality, but in the real world, the one where my feet live, we all have our own idea of freedom. For many it is freedom from something. Freedom from ignorance, freedom from starvation, freedom from persecution, freedom from confinement, slavery, and other icky, horrifying things.

Other people want the freedom to do something. Like the freedom to travel, practice and use their education, the freedom to attend school, or the freedom to make their own rules. In some cases they are looking for the freedom to worship their God, their way, and to created art, writing, song, etc in a way that expresses their soul. The freedom to love and build a life with a chosen partner, and the freedom to end a partnership without having to explain it to anyone else.

But freedom is often a double edged sword, one freedom versus another freedom, because as humans we like to think we can control one another. For many the goal is to limit other people’s choices. If we can’t do it through laws, we try to do it through religion, or social pressure. The number of ways humans try to control others is pretty astounding. The question is really, what does freedom mean to you?

In my fictional world, freedom is dependent on an individual’s ability to fly or walk. If you don’t like the rules in one territory, leave and find a different one. That makes a mobility challenge that much more worrisome, because they lose freedom in several ways. On NewEarth, their freedom is a matter of choice, as is their commitment to a chosen territory, and the territory dragon.